The
straight crossover audience for gay- and lesbian-themed
shows is large and easily tapped, as The L Word has
demonstrated, along with popularly-rated shows like Will
and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
In a 2004 Hollywood Reporter roundtable discussion
on “Gay Themes in Television,” MTV’s president
Brian Graden explained this phenomenon as involving a queer
“sensibility” that straights can enjoy and try on
temporarily: “I think (that) post-Queer Eye,
gay is more sensibility than it is specifically gay people and
gay shows. It's like urban-culture youth: Urban culture has
been co-opted by everyone; that's what's marketed to white kids
and everyone else.”
Showtime’s
top exec Bob Greenblatt has made it clear that Showtime has
had its eye on a wide (meaning: mostly straight) market audience
for the show all along, and furthermore that it is precisely
the show’s “sexiness” that has successfully
attracted this: "The L Word has not only proven
itself to be a signature show for Showtime but also one that
has captured the imagination of a large mainstream audience
with its bold, sexy storylines.”
Adding
a straight male character to the cast for Season Two was specifically
requested by the network, so that “the male audience...
have a guy they could relate to," Greenblatt told Entertainment
Weekly.
But
Mark’s sleazy tongue-flicking commentary and
porn-based assumptions about lesbian sex lives do not represent
a perspective that many straight men would feel proud of claiming
or inhabiting. The L Word offers an awful stereotype
of the straight male population here that may be based on a
certain amount of truth, as stereotypes can be, but ultimately
reflects badly on a lesbian ensemble show that no longer has
a single positive representation of a straight man.
Tim
was understood as noble, even as he wasn’t perfect—his
anger over Jenny’s betrayal was certainly reasonable and
didn’t come from a particularly homophobic or misguided
space. Perhaps Kit’s new love interest, Benjamin, was
introduced co-currently to Mark to provide a positive straight
male figure? But Benjamin is having an affair on his wife with
Kit, and is depicted as if he might be a smooth-talking fake,
or as Bette puts it “a circus performer,” after
all. James, Bette’s diligent assistant, is too much of
a secondary, under-used character to counter-balance Mark’s
sliminess.
If
the message boards on Showtime’s own online posting area
as well as those here on AfterEllen.com are any indication,
lesbian viewers in particular don’t seem thrilled with
Mark’s character. These viewers have generally noted that
they’re not interested in wasting their time on this distasteful
storyline; they get to hear guys being sleaze-buckets in their
real lives and they aren’t interested in examining it
on their favorite show.
We
must remember, though, that this is a soapy form of
drama. We do need villains (such as Helena and Mark) to motivate
friction and thus action and keep the Aristotelian three-act
structure propelled. Perhaps Mark’s character serves another
function than merely someone for straight men to relate to (which
I would argue most wouldn’t) and straight women to desire
(even when handsome and slickly-dressed in hipster rags, foul-mouthed
misogynists quickly kill most self-respecting straight girl’s
sex drives).
It’s
possible that creator Ilene Chaiken intends, through the Mark
character, to address some of the concerns of critics and message
boards alike that the first season pandered too much to the
viewing preferences of its voyeuristic straight male audience.
Through representing this projected audience contingent of guys
“getting off” on depictions of lesbian sex directly,
perhaps the producers intend to cause these viewers to feel
slightly guilty for the gross aspects of their voyeurism.
In
other words, it may be an attempt to lead the ogling straight
guy at the remote to feel less, not more, pleasure.
Given
that black and white, grainy footage of the lesbian main characters
and their friends/lovers as seen through the lenses of surveillance
cameras is interspersed with the normal, in-color shots of the
show, viewers become especially aware that they are in the position
of the voyeur in both cases.
By
offering a secondary camera eye “inside” the first
(a meta-eye if you will), The L Word reminds the viewer
that the show itself is always mediated by a lens. How does
this technique "call out" the straight male viewer
who is watching for voyeuristic pleasure, even as it still provides
them with the bedroom footage they are tuning in to see?
Moreover,
how does it call us all out as voyeurs?
